Infant gut microbiota development and family foods, a paper on the “blood microbiome” that caused some discussion on Twitter, Penicillinum and pears, and community types in the human microbiome.

Jobs and events

Mothur and programming in R workshop, May 23-25, Detroit

Postdoctoral Research Assistant – Microbiome – University of Oxford – Department of Plant Sciences

Pregnancy and birth

Infant Gut Microbiota Development Is Driven by Transition to Family Foods Independent of Maternal Obesity – Martin Frederik Laursen – mSphere

Human gut

A Novel Microbiome Therapeutic Increases Gut Microbial Diversity and Prevents Recurrent Clostridium difficile Infection – Sahil Khanna – The Journal of Infectious Diseases

Microbiome of blood

No carefully designed controls, no deposit of sequence reads, misleading Y-axis in Figure S1. I don’t endorse this study: Comprehensive description of blood microbiome from healthy donors assessed by 16S targeted metagenomic sequencing – Sandrine Païssé – Transfusion

Animal models

Rearing room affects the non-dominant chicken caecum microbiota, while diet affects the dominant microbiota – Jane Ludvigsen – Frontiers in Veterinary Science

Extremophiles and water microbiome

Artificial electron acceptors decouple archaeal methane oxidation from sulfate reduction – Silvan Scheller – Science

Perspective: A new diet for methane oxidizers – Amelia-Elena Rotaru – Science

The role of particle associated microbes in remineralization of fecal pellets in the upper mesopelagic of the Scotia Sea, Antarctica – Anna Belcher – Limnology and Oceanography

Growth dynamics of a laminated microbial mat in response to variable irradiance in an Antarctic lake – Ian Hawes – Freshwater Biology

Food microbiology

Profile of Penicillium species in the pear supply chain – I. Scholtz – Plant Pathology

More microbes

Survival games at the dinner table: regulation of Enterobacterial virulence through nutrient sensing and acquisition – Gaëlle Porcheron – Current Opinion in Microbiology

Bioinformatics and metagenomics

On the Origins and Control of Community Types in the Human Microbiome – Travis E. Gibson – PLOS Computational Biology

Microbes in the news

Forget chocolates. Give your sweetheart mushrooms this Valentine’s Day, says Stanford scientist – Rosemary Mena-Werth – Stanford News

Infant gut microbiome development not driven by maternal weight – Stephen Feller – UPI

Solid foods take over shaping of gut microbiota by 9 months – Yvette Brazier – Medical News Today

Why we might need to kill Australia’s koalas: Chlamydia infection is running rampant through their population, and a controlled cull might be their best hope- Katie Silver – BBC

Researchers Believe That Socialization Helps Spread Beneficial Gut Bacteria – Shariqua Ahmed – DogoNews

Novel microbiome therapy appears to prevent recurrent C. difficile infection – Healio

AbbVie Launches IBD Collaboration with Synlogic – GenEngNews

Bik’s Picks

Thursday’s massive gravitational wave news was broken by a sheet cake (really) – Rachel Feltman – Washington Post

Science and art

An Artist Asks: Whose Business Is Our DNA? – Short film on artwork by Heather Dewey-Hagborg who created masks of strangers based on genetic material left behind – The Atlantic

[hr]